Illustration by Suman Choudhury

For Jayaram, religion means praying to the rain gods. With the monsoons round the corner, he has spent all his savings buying ragi saplings for his 10-by-10-foot farmland. The farmer is now looking skywards for support.

Like Jayaram, all 15 families of Gopalapura village ? which has sprouted like a satellite establishment next to Ramanagaram, 45km south of Bangalore ? are hoping the rain gods don?t disappoint. A good ragi crop means a year-long supply of food for the family.

Like Jayaram, the 15 families of Gopalapura do not own the land they live on or cultivate. They have cleared forest land to build their huts and sow their ragi. They trek two kilometres ? up to the four-lane Bangalore-Mysore highway ? for water. The closest hospital, shops and primary schools are in Ramanagaram. Gopalapura is a village that a census officer would probably give a miss.

But the village is in the news. The plot of land that Jayaram picked for his ragi field stands at the foot of a towering 1,050-foot rock which is in the eye of a storm in Karnataka. Two months ago, the Karnataka forest department handed over the rock to a Bangalore-based NGO, which will construct out of it the world?s tallest monolith ? a 712-foot tall rock-cut statue of the Buddha. The monolith will be flanked by shorter statues of Mahatma Gandhi and B.R. Ambedkar.

The statue of Buddha is only one part of a grand peace plan. M. Ramesh, president, Sanghamitra Foundation ? the NGO that conceptualised the project ? says a world peace centre will be built around the statue. ?The centre will stand for world peace, religion, harmony and international brotherhood,? he says. The plan also includes building a special heritage centre that will lead visitors down the path of peace.

Everyone hoots for peace. It was raining stars in Bangalore last Sunday. Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Lara Datta and other Bollywood biggies staged a song-and-dance show in the city to raise funds for the peace project. That took care of the finances. The cost of constructing the Buddha alone is estimated at a whopping Rs 30 crore.

One loss has been overlooked by the peace-loving NGO. The peace centre will cost Jayaram his piece of land. The Sanghamitra Foundation has acquired three acres of land around the rock to construct the heritage centre.

Which means Gopalapura village has to go. But Jayaram ? who lives from monsoon to monsoon ? is not thinking that far ahead. ?I?ll take it as it comes,? he says.

In silk-producing circles, Ramanagaram is known as the biggest breeding centre for silk worms in south-east Asia. Even then, the town?s silk business is completely monsoon driven. Good rains mean a good mulberry crop, well-fed silk worms and booming business. But three consecutive drought years, from 2000, have crippled the industry. ?Unemployment peaked in that period,? says C. Nanjappa, administrative officer at the local Rotary hospital.

Jayaram may have mentally blocked out the Buddha, but Ramanagaram residents can think of nothing but the statue that will soon tower over the town. The monolith, they are convinced, means moolah for them. ?The peace centre will act as a magnet for foreign tourists and Bangalore?s picnic crowd,? says Nanjappa. Ramanagaram is looking forward to an economic upswing.

Environmentalists in Bangalore may be crying foul about the project ? they say the world peace centre will eat into forest land and carving the monolith means defacing the rock ? but Ramanagaram?s residents are not complaining. Says Kariappa, a local shop-owner, ?Software brought money to Bangalore. The Buddha will do the same for us.?

They thought so too, when the rocky terrain of Ramanagaram made a name for itself as the place where Sholay was shot. Three decades down, Gabbar still remains a dreaded name in Bollywood land. But in Ramanagaram ? a town untouched by Hindi ? no one remembers where Sambha sat when Basanti was doing that crucial climax jig. A one-room Sholay Cyber Caf? is the only sign of Ramanagaram?s brief fling with fame.